>I witnessed a lot of standard issue anti-intellectualism whenever you
>posted a series of complex posts on topics which challenged pop
>feminist leitmotifs (not from your readers, of course, who were there
>to learn and discuss but from your adversaries who grew like
>sunflowers). How could you know all these things? What were your
>"qualifications"?
I think this is very much the issue, probably more than anything else. Re: the most recent weirdness, where someone kept calling me an academic, I realized: they don't believe I'm not.
That is why blartow told me to resign my job and stop getting paid to be a feminist. Which was really funny because, then, I would have been happy to be paid to do anything and the thought of getting paid to be a feminist ... hee hoo.
And since we've learned, now, that there was a private discussion list for the group of women you speak of, I have no doubt the meme circulated among this group -- even if they didn't say it.
This is what I think: they couldn't believe someone with an advanced degree didn't have a job using that degree and/or wasn't making loads of cash. Have you ever seen the popular searches on my blog: most popular are on academic, grad stud, and what they *think* is my last name -- back when whatsherface was doing her s00per top s3krit searching to figure out who I really was -- cos I had to be either a paid or volunteer, what was it now? Oh yeah: some were convinced i was an agent provacateur. Hence, the demand that I quit my job as feminist. HA HA HA.
Anyway, I couldn't figure that out. Now it makes more sense. They are so tightly bound up in the myth of meritocracy, they can't believe someone "smart" (or whatever) isn't making oodles. Or at least a decent wage. And yeah, I think belledame once pointed out that there was this insistence on knowing what my creds were -- as if I hadn't always been up front about that -- and a kind of amazement that I didn't go to Harvard or some shit.
And worse, as feminists, it never occurs to them to think about all the reasons why someone doesn't finish the dissertation. I mean, my life is a fucking classic case of gender/class oppression. The reasons why I dumped the diss had to do with supporting myself and kid after a divorce. The fact of no family wealth. Etc. But that analysis flew right out the window.
I, having grown up in a world that warned you against advanced degrees lest you end up washing dishes like the ones we knew who did (coz there's always a kernel f truth to the myth), well, I just have no clue about their world, where such a myth probably doesn't circulate. So, I couldn't fathom why there was a suspicion that I couldn't be who I said I was: a failed academic making crappy wages.
>To return to the first point: when such differences exist, there will
>be disagreements, misunderstandings, even hurt feelings. But if these
>tussles happen within the purported bubble of 'sisterhood' - if, in
>other words, they happen within a discourse protocol which denies the
>validity of honest conflict between women and which imagines all
>unpleasantness to come from a pernicious male influence ("male
>identified") - even the smallest dust ups can get completely out of
>hand.
>
>Then there's the practical matter of the wretchedness of email and
>blog comments (particularly quickly written in the rush of events) as
>a conveyor of subtlety.
>
>
>Just a few thoughts, incompletely worked through. There's a lot to
>think about there.
yeah. Plus, I think women take it all right to their very identity. If there's disagreement here, among mostly men, I don't get the sense that any of us are going melt. Disagreements among women, though, seem to be taken as an attack on someone's identity -- sense of self. (The Carol Gilligan, Mary Belenky et al. psychologists explain this in terms of girls being raised mostly by women, the difficulty of separation, etc.)
>--
>"We're candies, not job applicants, give us a shot!"
heh. what's this from?
>http://monroelab.net/blog/
>____________________________